In The Right Direction
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: A child’s intuition is something Olivia wishes she still had that little voice inside that lets one know when something is out of kilter. postep for Charisma


She watches the goings-on through a veteran's eyes. Six years in the Special Victims Unit and she'd thought she'd seen it all, but this…no. She had never seen this before, and it made her sick to even think about it. None of the words in her vocabulary seemed bad enough to describe the circumstances of the case that she was currently closing.

Not many things can drive Olivia Benson to tears, but the beginning of this case is a different story. She can still see the tiny faces in that darkened house, frozen prematurely by the shadows of death. And she wants to scream for the injustice of it all. Those children didn't ask to die, she muses as she stands in the cold outdoors. And Melanie certainly didn't ask to be pregnant.

Olivia contemplates this as the medics leave, taking Melanie along with them back to a New York City hospital. Her thoughts are causing her to ignore Munch, who's playing the older brother role again, and berating her for going alone like that. He doesn't know that she had another officer with her the entire time, and she is too exhausted to correct him. It has been a trying case for everyone and Olivia just wants to go back to her stationhouse and her squad room. She wants to forget about all of this, but she knows that it will linger with her.

This is the problem with being a sex crimes detective, she muses as Munch finally changes the subject, takes her gently by the shoulder and guides her to an unmarked sedan. The cases linger too damn long. Olivia knows that there is "no crying in baseball" as Elliot so eloquently put it her first day in, but this case…There is always an exception to the rule, Olivia tells herself, but Munch is already coddling her enough, and if she starts to cry in front of him, he won't leave her alone. And despite the fact that she knows she _shouldn't_ be alone, she _wants_ to be alone.

She wishes that she could go back in time. She wants to change everything that has been, and she wants to make it all right again. Maybe if I were a fairy, she muses ruefully, and she smiles, which only prompts Munch to ask what in the hell she finds so amusing. But Olivia ignores him and he shakes his head as they leave, knowing better than to press the issue. The two of them will already be made to go through another psych evaluation as it is. They'll soon know if something truly is wrong with the other.

Innocence should be a fundamental right, Olivia decides as she stares out the window and continues thinking. No child should ever have to go through something as awful as this. And even if she didn't believe it, it would still be true. No child should die at the hand of someone who was supposed to love and care for them. No twelve-year-old girl should be pregnant, and yet it happens more often than she would like to think about.

It's sad, she thinks, that the world in which she and Elliot and Munch and Fin live an work in is falling slowly and surely from grace. Munch is talking again, to no one in particular, and though Olivia knows that his comments are indirectly directed towards her, she continues to ignore him. He says nothing indicating that she's being rude; he's always been better at telling when she wants to be left to her own devices than the other two.

Olivia continues her contemplation. It fascinates and scares her that Abraham or Eugene or whatever the hell his name had been had managed to brainwash so many into believing his lies. But there was one thing that he had not convinced them of, and it was that one thing that led to his downfall.

A child's intuition is something Olivia wishes she still had; that little voice inside that lets one know when something is out of kilter. But it disappears when one gets older and is replaced by a sense of something bigger, and yet not the same. Sometimes it is harder for those who are older to tell when something is amiss, but a child…a child always knows. And those children had known. But only Melanie had survived to say it, and it was Melanie who saved Olivia's life by shooting Abraham. Olivia continues to look out the window as she and Munch draw closer to the city, Melanie's voice lingering in the back of her mind.

"He said he was greater than God…but nobody is."

A/N: Yet another post-ep that is a few months behind…but like I said, this is what I get for staying up the whole damn night on one soda…anyways…SVU is not mine and will never be mine no matter how much I wish for it to be mine, so I'll just deal with it and stick to this.


End file.
